


Right of Passage

by Beastrage



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cor is Confused, Dubious Morality, Gen, Tempering Grounds (Final Fantasy XV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 09:24:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15838395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beastrage/pseuds/Beastrage
Summary: A fifteen-year old Cor Leonis passes out before escaping the Tempering Ground. Gilgamesh 'tends' to him.





	Right of Passage

In another world, the boy named Cor Leonis would somehow miraculously stagger out of the deathtrap called the Tempering Grounds. He would pretty much fall out, heavily wounded, clutching a bloody sword not his own. Almost to the point of death. After weeks of recovery, the newly humbled boy, no, man, would receive a new name, whispered by the lips of the common soldiers who had served as witness to his emergence: the Immortal.  
In another world, that’s exactly what happened. 

In this one, Gilgamesh looks down at his fallen foe. Said foe has passed out halfway on his journey to the exit. He sighs, the breath whispering out from behind his mask.  
The boy is so grievously injured that it would take a miracle (or a Phoenix Down) for him to get up again.  
He will certainly die here, alone. If Gilgamesh does nothing.  
The former Shield considers summoning the dead to drag the boy out. That would certainly be the easier course to take, to get the boy out of here alive.  
Or it could injure the boy further. The spirits here are not kind. It is not their purpose to be.  
Why does it matter if this boy lives? Gilgamesh has killed many men that have chosen to brave the Tempering Grounds, all of them unworthy and foolish. It should not matter if this angry, foolhardy child lives or dies on his grounds.  
Yet...  
There are so few that survive his first blows. No one who manages to live through an entire fight. The King could use such strength at his side, even if that strength in question did not belong to his Shield.  
For that strength to be of use, however, the boy first must survive. Gilgamesh is immortal. Cursed. Unable to die. He has had no need for the skills of a healer for a long time now.  
(What if I’m not in your vicinity? What will you do for your wounds then, Gilgamesh?)  
Gilgamesh shakes his head ever so slightly. Shaking off the ghosts and cobwebs that come from remembering that far back. Now, now, there is the boy. The boy who fought him, who took his arm. 

He picks the boy up easily. The boy is light, for his age. Usually there’s an added weight of growth-spurt inspired muscles at eighteen. And height.  
The boy is short. He had realized this, sometime during their fight, when the boy kept getting closer and closer in effort to reach his foe.  
But he seems so much smaller, now that he lies so still. 

In a way, it is quite fortunate that so many failed warriors have passed through so recently. The supplies they brought with them are still fresh and unrotted. A nearby bag holds plenty of bandages that the former owner never got the chance to use. Canteens lay about, still half full of clean water. Potions scattered about the area, some in most obscure of locations.  
Picking up the necessary items would be difficult enough with one hand without holding the boy with that one hand. Doing such makes his task impossible. 

Gilgamesh could replace his arm, reshape flesh with the cursed magic animating his form. It would be easy, to erase any sign that the boy ever marked him.  
He doesn’t.  
Instead he uses his magic to give himself a more temporary limb, one that will vanish as soon as he ceases focusing on its existence.  
The healing items are easy enough to retrieve after that.  
The Blademaster lays the boy out on the ground, near a safe area. Not the most comfortable of places, but there is nowhere better. The Tempering Grounds are for the dead, not the living.  
Gilgamesh sits down in the dust, pulling the boy closer to better examine him. 

He tends to the wounds he inflicted on the boy to the best of his lacking ability. Cleaning out ancient dust caught in the flesh, wrapping the open cuts carefully, and applying potions to more serious life-threatening damages. More often than he’d like, Gilgamesh finds himself waiting for an old weight on his arm, to be corrected, for the words, “Let me help” to be whispered in his ears.  
The boy is strong and still struggles for life, making up for Gilgamesh’s weakness in the art, his weakness to memories he thought long forgotten.  
(“Bind the wound tightly, to slow the blood. Bind too tightly and they will lose a limb.”  
“Do you think me ignorant, to make such a mistake?”  
“You never know with warriors. Many seem to view a healer as clean-up for their mistakes. Nothing more, nothing less.”  
“You are not less, for being a healer.”  
A wry smile. “Not everyone thinks the same as you, Gilgamesh.”)  
Setting the bones of the boy’s hand is unpleasant but necessary. Just as it was unpleasant but necessary to break that same hand in the first place. Not perfect, but it has always been easier to harm then it is to heal. 

Unfortunate that it wakes the boy in the process. He comes to life with a scream of pain. Comes up fighting.  
Weakened and injured as the boy is, Gilgamesh barely has to expend any effort at all to push him back onto the ground. “Stay still. I will not harm you.”  
“What the hell!?” The boy gasps. He wiggles weakly, straining to reach a weapon. Or simply to get up to attack the Blademaster. Gilgamesh is not exactly sure which is more likely for the boy to attempt at this point in time.  
“Stay. Still.” The newly set bones appear slightly crooked. But further attempts might damage the hand even more. Best to settle for this. He wraps the hand as tight as he can manage it. There’s the boy, panting in the background. Stifling little whimpers.  
Decent pain tolerance. But then, Gilgamesh already knew that from when the boy refused to stop fighting him.  
The boy heaves for breath, eyes darting from his newly wrapped hand to Gilgamesh’s mask to the other bandages, before looking back at Gilgamesh again.  
“What..I...I’m not dead?” The boy at last asks. With his wide eyes, he looks completely lost. It must be odd, to wake up to your foe tending your injuries, sitting next to you peaceably.  
(“Who...are you?”  
“Oh, just a simple healer! No one to worry about, that’s for sure.”)  
“You live. Yes.”  
The boy’s eyes fasten to Gilgamesh’s missing limb. “Your arm...I cut that off.” The second half of the statement is more of muttering to himself than anything else. Gilgamesh ignores him, head turning to look at the injury for himself. His missing left arm. Hm. 

“I suppose I will be all right now,” Gilgamesh muses, wiggling the fingers of the hand in question. It’ll take a little time to adjust, to learn fighting without the availability of his left hand. Gilgamesh has nothing but time.  
The boy’s face twitches. Just the slightest of movements. The level of control is remarkable for someone so young. Anyone else would have missed it. Gilgamesh, who has been fighting all kinds of enemies for thousands of years, does not.  
Behind his mask, Gilgamesh’s stiff face twitches as well, shaping itself into an unseen frown. Did he bind the boy’s wounds too tightly?  
The Blademaster runs a careful finger down said bandages, gauging the looseness of each one. 

“Why?” The boy finally asks, from where he’s craning his neck to keep track of Gilgamesh’s actions. A sound precaution, one to approve of.  
“Your King will need your strength. You do him no good if you are dead.”  
“But I lost.” To you.  
“Many have lost to me,” Gilgamesh acknowledges. He stands, rising to his full height. So very tall over the boy laying on the earth. The boy flinches. “You live, where they do not.” He gestures to his missing arm. “You have even wounded me. Do you not count that as the victory it is?”  
From the way the boy looks away, refuses to meet his eyes, he can tell the boy does not. There is only failure, the unforgiving sting of it.  
(Sometimes, living is not enough. Sometimes, living is the loss, even while one triumphs.)  
(Why didn’t he die? Why didn’t the gods let him die? He failed them.)  
“You have time, boy,” he says, a little softer. A little less hard armor and cold blades. “Live and grow stronger from your loss. Serve your King well.”  
(Don’t abandon yours.)  
The boy eyes him with mistrust clear in his eyes. A mistrust that is useless at this point. Gilgamesh has tended his wounds, prevented his death. What would be the point in hurting him now?  
(“To be cruel. That is the point, O Shield of Mine Brother.” A bitter growl of a laugh. More daemon than human. “Haven’t you hurt me enough?”)  
Gilgamesh turns. Towards the door, towards his door of his bridge. Away from the boy. He takes out his blade. Drops it on the ground.  
“Leave now.” The boy is recovered enough for the trip back. Should Gilgamesh allow him to stay any longer, the boy may attempt to challenge him again. Best to prevent that, if possible. Not forever, of course. But delaying it will work.  
Only when he hears the slipping of rocks, the sound of the sheathed blade being grabbed from the rocky earth, does he turn to watch the boy leave. 

The boy doesn’t appear to be aware that the sword he carries belongs to Gilgamesh as he limps away, instead of it being his own.  
Gilgamesh sees no need to enlighten him.  
It will be in good hands.  
And keeping the boy’s own sword...well, he’ll come back for it.  
Gilgamesh is sure of it. 

(“I know little of swords, as you know, besides that you use them to stab people, but I have talked to those who know swords better than I, for this sword. I hope this blade will serve you well.”  
“Thank you..” What does he call the healer, at this point? After so long on the road together...  
“Call me by name, Gilgamesh. Are we not friends?” A smile.  
“Very well...Ardyn.”)

Gilgamesh does not breath. But he comes close, in heaving out another sigh.  
Live well, boy.  
For you never know what the morrow brings.


End file.
